


Running on Empty

by kiki_miserychic



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Episode: s01e08 Out of Gas, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:44:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiki_miserychic/pseuds/kiki_miserychic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal: now, then; here, there. When he falls to the floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running on Empty

At five years old Malcolm Reynolds learned that not every man coming through the ranch was his father.

Inara’s right there in front of him, showing off her honey smile, but without secrets and pretenses behind it. She’s wearing that gold, shimmery thing from the beginning of the cattle job on Persephone. Her hair looks like it took forever and a day of servant girls with fancified products and ivory combs. The makeup is perfect, as if she would stand for anything else. Blurry edges surround her, but Mal’s too busy trying to remember why he can’t let himself lean into her.

He thinks she’ll taste like the strawberries Kaylee’d shared with the crew for her birthday last year.

His hand is on her shoulder, resting lightly. Her pretty mouth is moving to say something about her training or her shuttle or her tea or some other _go-se_ that don’t amount to anything when all the cards are on the table.

After her lips fall open, he realizes that her flavor is closer to the small, green apples that release their bitter juice after you bit into them. That he’s actually kissing her is his second thought.

Vaguely, Mal can hear the lilting of old hymns that were sung every Sunday. Having been drug to church by his mother until he was 13, Ma figured he was old enough to decide for himself what he believed. Being 13, Mal reckoned Sundays were better spent hang out at the docks.

They’re in Inara’s shuttle now, but he feels uncomfortable around this much softness. _Wo de tian, a_ if it didn’t unsettle him being allowed in here without barging in uninvited like.

Buckles, suspenders, and buttons tripping him up like he was an inexperienced _ben tian sheng de yi dui rou_. Whereas Inara is graceful like a horse that’d been raised up since birth and hand fed. Mal knows comparing Inara to a horse wouldn’t exactly make her happy even if Mal meant it as the highest compliment.

At 17 Mal rediscovered his religion as the bank discovered past due bills and the town doctor discovered Ma's stomach cancer.

Barely 21 Mal declared himself all grow’d up and tired of the pitiful stares full of “that poor Reynolds boy, never know’d his daddy, mama up and dying, and leaving him with that land not worth half enough to cover them debts.”

There’s no smooth silks under his fingertips, never was, and never will be. It’s only his twisting and cracking knuckles clenching around the unforgiving grating of the floor. He can no longer breathe in delicate perfumes, but the smell of his own blood dripping below is an odd kind of comfort.

At 22 Mal started running and never stopped to look back.


End file.
